Ever since Guillermo del Toro walked away from The Hobbit (which is now going to be directed by Peter Jackson) the question has been: what will he direct next? The man has no shortage of projects to choose from, having announced or been attached to a load of options over the past couple years. He appeared at the Saturn Awards and talked about nearly everything from At the Mountains of Madness to Frankenstein, though he stopped short of announcing what film he’ll actually make next. Read More »

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Residents of Middle-Earth should pop some Advil, as already-troubled New Line Cinema has been sued by the Tolkien estate, which seeks $150 million plus in damages in the mega-lawsuit. Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings trilogy did over $6 billion in world-wide receipts, but the estate claims that not a drop of gross profit participation has come its way. Moreover, the suit seeks further damages and, here’s the real killjoy, the right to take any other J.R.R. Tolkien works (i.e. The Hobbit films) elsewhere.

The estate released the following statement via its U.S. Counsel, Bonnie Eskenazi, practically writing the word “ludicrous” in the sky for all of the films’ and books’ fans to sigh at…

“New Line has brought new meaning to the phrase ‘creative accounting.’ I cannot imagine how on earth New Line will argue to a jury that these films could gross literally billions of dollars, and yet the creator’s heirs, who are entitled to a share of gross receipts, don’t get a penny.”

This huge “penny” hangs over last month’s once-optimistic news that fanboy favorite and Peter Jackson friend Guillermo del Toro was nearly a lock to direct both Hobbit flicks simultaneously. All of this after New Line and Peter Jackson settled their own notorious disagreement about boatloads of LOTR money back in December.

However, del Toro has more recently expressed doubt that the films are a sure thing, while playing up his multiple, rad spinning plates like Frankenstein, his H.P. Lovecraft pet project At the Mountains of Madness, and even Marvel’s Dr. Strange. What is going on over at New Line, I mean, really. This suit could not have come at a worse time, what with Business Week even suggesting that Warner Bros. fold the studio altogether.

The live action Tarzan film has put on hold so that Pan’s Labyrinth mastermind Guillermo del Toro can tackle one of his passion projects. LatinoReview has learned that Guillermo will be directing an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness next after he finishes Hellboy 2 (due Summer 2008). Based on the 1931 H.P. Lovecraft novel, the film will follow explorers who journey to Antarctica where they uncover an ancient race of beasts in the ruins of a lost civilization.

Del Toro has previous said that “The studio [Warner Bros] is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it’s impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe.”

HP Lovecraft is one of the seminal horror authors of the twentieth century. He wrote more than one hundred stories, and achieved popular acclaim in such publications as Astounding Stories and Weird Tales. Cliver Barker has said that “Lovecraft’s fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror.” Madness is considered by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi to represent the decisive “demythology” of the Cthulhu Mythos. Director John Carpenter’s 1995 Lovecraftian tribute movie In the Mouth of Madness bases its title on this story, although the plot is unrelated.